I know this is a tough subject

But I wrote about sex offenders for WNPR, and how Connecticut is rethinking its policies toward people who end up on our sex offender registry. Before you nail me to the wall, please just read the piece. I kept trying to write the thing (for several months, actually) but as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, …

I cannot let the Duggars go

That benighted family owes me nothing: No. Thing. But the story of Josh Duggar’s sexual abuse of children  strikes every chord for me. That the show may have been cancelled doesn’t mean squat to me. I am listening, as I type this, to old-time gospel music on Pandora, which I never do because it makes …

The shame of the Duggars

The recent news of the sexual predator-nature of Josh Duggar (of the “Ten Hundred Duggars and Counting” TLC show, and here‘s his slick-as-shit website) is gross. Though they refuse the label, the Duggars are standard bearers for the Quiverfull movement (no birth control, ever, and women are to keep silent and pregnant, in the home). …

Maybe the bravest thing you’ll read all day: A guest blog from Lois Kulas

Fifty-seven years have passed since Marilyn Van Derbur was crowned Miss America. Approximately fifty million viewers tuned into the pageant in 1958. She instantly became known across the U.S. Girls and women wanted to be like her. Men wanted to date her. It was a different world for women, and appearances were more important than …

On Sandusky and silence

Read what Patrice Fitzgerald has to say, at Indie Chicks Cafe. Patrice writes: If only it hadn’t happened, all those tender young boys who got involved with sports in Sandusky’s Second Mile program would have been helped and never hurt.  Joe Paterno would have had a wonderful career with years of football success and died …

Paterno knew

But you knew that already. Here’s the Freeh report on the egregious failure of Penn State University officials to protect children from a sexual predator. This should be a lesson to the rest of us (to steal a phrase): If you see something, say something. Say something, and then follow up and keep following up …

Joe Paterno: “I wish I had done more”

Members of the Penn State Board of Trustees have fired long-time winning football coach Joe Paterno, as well as the university president, Graham Spanier, in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal that is rocking that campus. From the New York Times, which reported the end of Paterno’s career the day before: The university’s most …